Paul Kelso

Paul Kelso is the Telegraph's Chief Sports Reporter.

Opposition to Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish players joining their English counterparts in the Olympic football tournament is a disgrace wrapped in a shambles.

Tuesday’s botched and hubristic announcement by the British Olympic Association of an “historic” deal was a timely reminder of the apparently limitless capacity for self-interest, political in-fighting and incompetence among our governing bodies.

Instead of producing a positive story about the prospect of united teams the combined might of the BOA and the home nations secured derision on every back page, and confirmed their capacity for cock-up in the public mind.

Given the announcement came three days before 1.7m tickets for the football tournaments go on sale, and 24 hours before the lucky 700,000 were informed what tickets they have secured in the wider London 2012 ballot, it was good-news burying on an Olympic scale. It could not have been more effective had the executive committee… Read More

Some 23 days after the closing date for London 2012 ticket applications 1.8m people remain entirely in the dark about what they may or may not get for their money.

Want to know what you will be watching, how much it has cost or where you might be sitting? Sorry, you’ll have to wait a little longer. So far there are no tickets, and many more questions than answers.

Ticketing was always going to be one of the London organising committee’s (Locog) biggest challenges, logistically and in terms of communications. It’s a vast, complex process that is crucial to the Locog budget, contributing £500m to the cost of running the Games. It is also the biggest interaction with the public who, lest we forget, have already contributed £150-a-head in taxes to pay the £9.3bn construction bill.

But on the evidence of the last week London is in danger of blowing goodwill by taking… Read More

Inspired by @benlyt on Twitter, I have just hauled down my copy of the excellent Soccernomics (re-titled 'Why England Lose' in the UK) in which Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski set out 12 inefficiencies in the transfer market that conventional wisdom seems to ignore.

They cite as inspiration Billy Beane, the Oakland As general manager immortalised in Michael Lewis's Moneyball, who exploited the failings of baseball's player-trading market to turn the Oakland As record-breaking side on the lowest salary in the American League.

Beane was so conspicuously successful that John W Henry, currently enjoying his first transfer window as Liverpool owner, tried to hire him as general manager of the Boston Red Sox when he bought the franchise in 2002. Henry was so convinced that Beane could trade up the quality of the Red Sox roster while driving down… Read More

England’s world may have fallen in last month in Zurich, but events in Doha this week demonstrate that Planet Football has been profoundly shaken on its axis.

Fifa selected two new World Cup hosts last month, but it is the selection of Qatar for 2022 that has done most to alter the game’s world view, and prompt a major reputational challenge for Fifa.

The implications of this tiny, fabulously rich state’s victory in Zurich will resonate for a decade, both inside Fifa and around the sporting world as the disruption of a probable winter World Cup begin to bite.

For Fifa the impact could also be profound, as scepticism over the executive committee’s decision to come to Qatar is fuelled… Read More

Liverpool’s new owners secured the club for a cash payment of less than £218m, recently filed company documents reveal.

The precise figure that principal owner John W Henry, club chairman Tom Werner and their New England Sports Ventures group paid for the equity in the club is contained in a slew of Companies House filings made in the two months since the Boston Red Sox owners took control at Anfield.

NESV won control of the club after former chairman Martin Broughton successfully forced through the sale against the wishes of former owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

According to the filings NESV paid £217,778,550 for the equity in the club, effectively the amount Hicks and Gillett owed to principal lender Royal Bank of Scotland.

The Qatar Foundation’s £125m five-year sponsorship of Barcelona’s shirts marks the end of a 111-year principle, and, perhaps, the start of Qatar's payback for Catalan and Spanish assistance in their 2022 World Cup campaign.

How else to explain why a charitable not-for-profit foundation that focuses on education projects in the Gulf and relies apparently exclusively for funds on Qatar’s ruling Al-Thani family, would want to spend millions to occupy what was hitherto a sacrosanct six square-inches of shirt?

Qatar’s victory in Zurich last week was achieved in part thanks to a widely-acknowledged vote-trading deal struck between the emirate’s bid and supporters of the Spain-Portugal 2018 campaign.

Under the deal, investigated but not proven by Fifa’s ethics commission, Qatar’s Mohamed Bin… Read More

The wrap was designed to decorate the outside of the Olympic stadium (PA)

Given the economic climate the London 2012 Olympics were always likely to face cuts, but this week we had confirmation that these really could be the no-frills Games, in the case of the main stadium, literally so.

The Olympic Delivery Authority confirmed on Tuesday that a fabric “wrap”, intended to conceal the functional workings of the largely temporary stadium structure, had been scrapped to save £7m.

Instead of the innovative screen, which we were promised would feature a multitude of projected animations and ever-changing designs, visitors to the Olympic Park's definitive venue will be greeted by the bare innards of the arena, the girders and breeze blocks currently painted an austere black

Samoa could be heading to US for 15-man Rugby World Cup (Getty Images)

The inclusion of Rugby Sevens in the Olympics could help the 15-man game break into new markets including the USA and emerging economic giants China, India and Russia according to Mike Miller, chief executive of the International Rugby Board.

Miller, in London to address a rugby conference this week, predicted that the USA would one day host a Rugby World Cup, in part because of the new interest in the game sparked by the Olympics.

Last year sevens was admitted to the program for the 2016 Rio Olympics, along with golf. There was some debate about the abbreviated form of the game – strictly a discipline rather than the sport itself – being… Read More

It was a dismal morning in Stratford, but in a Portakabin on the site of the Olympic handball arena three of the men responsible for delivering the London Games were all smiles today.

You would never describe the atmosphere at Olympic Delivery Authority quarterly budget updates as celebratory, but for ODA chief executive David Higgins, David Goldstone, the finance director of the Government Olympic Executive, and sports minister Hugh Robertson, there is plenty to be satisfied with.

The headlines from the latest set of figures are unspectacular, and that is exactly the way they like it: the overall cost of the project is forecast to fall by £23m to £7.232bn, a small fall in the cost of the main stadium have been… Read More

Almost exactly two months ago, on August 19, I took a call from A Guy Who Knows Things about a subject we have never discussed before or since: Wayne Rooney’s future.

The information was presented as being “50-50” at best, and I was warned not to run with it unless I could get it independently verified. Potentially though it was dynamite.

Rooney, The Guy said, was considering an approach from Manchester City, who were weighing up a £250,000 a-week offer. Despite the earthquake it would cause in Manchester, Rooney was beginning to consider it a real option for his next move.

What to do? The sourcing was good, the contact unfailingly reliable. And Rooney’s contract remained unsigned despite repeated assurances that pen would be put to paper after the World Cup.

But Rooney, to City? Do me a favour. So, I did what you are supposed to do. I asked.